The Windows 2000 Terminal Services Capacity and Scaling white paper contains:
Introduction
Terminal Services is a technology that lets users execute Windows®-based applications on a remote Windows 2000-based server. This white paper contains testing methodologies, results, analysis, and sizing guidelines for Windows 2000 Terminal Services. Groupe Bull and NEC engineers, under the supervision of Microsoft’s Terminal Services development team, performed the sizing tests and data collection at NEC’s Redmond Technology Center in Redmond, WA, USA. The tests were performed using Windows 2000 Advanced Server, build 2195.
In a server-based computing environment, all application execution and data processing occur on the server. Therefore it is extremely useful and desirable for server manufacturers to test the scalability and capacity of their servers to determine how many client sessions a server can typically support under a variety of different scenarios. Groupe Bull and NEC began this testing procedure under the supervision of Microsoft starting with the Beta 3 release of Windows 2000. Multiple NEC/Groupe Bull EXPRESS5800 hardware configurations were tested with Terminal Services in order to provide customers with guidelines to choose the right server according to their needs.
The results and analysis contained here should not be interpreted in isolation. The client applications used in the test (mostly components of Microsoft® Office 2000) are not easy to characterize without accounting for the features or data sets an individual uses or creates. Three different user scenarios are tested in accordance with Gartner Group recommendations (Knowledge Worker, Structured Task Worker and Data Entry Worker), but the actual applications, features, and data sets used in these user scenarios cannot precisely mimic the experience of a real-life user on a moment-by-moment basis. The tests assume a rather robotic quality, with users taking no prolonged breaks and essentially using the same functions and data sets during a ten to thirty minute period of activity. In short, your results may vary.
The results are conservative however, with a server considered to be at capacity when the server is 10 percent slower than it was with a single user load. With this in mind, consider buying a server that will, based on the analysis, comfortably accommodate the required number of users under the expected peak workload, leaving room for expansion.
NEC and Groupe Bull Participation
The tests described in this paper were performed with the help of NEC
and
Groupe Bull
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